Colorado

Camping atop each of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains

Jon Kedrowski climbed and camped on 58 Colorado fourteeners last summer and wrote a book about it along with his climbing partner, Chris Tomer. (Chris Tomer, bigearthpublishing.com)

Jon Kedrowski,
right, and Chris
Tomer greet audience
members
during a book
signing at the Tattered
Cover LoDo. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

When other mountain climbers hear about the "Sleeping On The Summits" project to spend the night atop each of the named 14,000-foot mountains in Colorado, their first reaction is: Are you crazy?

"There's a reason this has never been done before," acknowledged Chris Tomer, one of the two "Sleeping on the Summits" participants in a mission that took 95 days last year to accomplish.

Nobody knows better than Tomer, a meteorologist at KDVR and KWGN, that lightning is the top weather-related cause of death in Colorado.

Actually, Tomer's "Sleeping On The Summits" partner, Jon Kedrowski, personally can testify to the power of lightning, too. He was in his tent, on the summit block of Mount Harvard at 9:50 p.m., when the air suddenly was so charged that the zippers on his jacket and the tent were buzzing.

"And I was, like, 'Oh, this isn't good,' and I grabbed my pack, grabbed my shoes, rolled off the summit blocks and ran, and 20 or 30 seconds later, the lightning struck, almost like a bomb hitting," Kedrowski said.

The strike trashed the tent, a demo he was testing for Sierra Designs. The following morning, Kedrowskisaw that the bolt's heat had fused two metal poles together.

"A 'worst-case scenario' is what Chris called it," said Kedrowski, a geographer and professor who recently worked as a consultant on a National Geographic movie about Mount Everest.

"But by then, we'd slept on 54 peaks. We were almost done with the project."

The story would seem to vindicate those who thought the two were nuts: See? It WAS a dangerous project! Tomer and Kedrowski know they were lucky, but they also admit that the risk factor was part of the allure.

"Climbing the fourteeners in traditional style is an excellent goal, an excellent achievement, but taking it to the next level is what we did," Tomer said, "and what very few people will attempt to do. We did it to test ourselves. We've always been big dreamers. We dream up big projects, and we just wanted to see if we could do this."

Tomer, 32, and Kedrowski, 33, have been fast friends and climbing partners since their freshman year at Valparaiso University in Indiana.

The idea for "Sleeping On The Summits" sprang from a climb up Mount Elbert. Why not combine Tomer's meteorological expertise to predict the best windows of weather with Kedrowski's knowledge of topography, and aim to break the record in what the two call "dash and crash" summit climbs?

"Light and fast, to minimize time in the danger zone," Tomer said.

The logic: Pack lightly — Kedrowski's summit pack is 44 cubic inches that accommodates a sleeping bag, a pad, a tent, a down jacket and a camera to record the sunset and sunrise — and hike fast. They brought food that didn't need to be heated — cold pizza, sandwiches, burritos — and left the stove at home or at a transition camp lower on the mountain.

The conventional wisdom among people climbing Colorado's fourteeners is to start early, sometimes well before dawn, reach the summit before noon and head back before afternoon storms move in. In summer, the hours between 1 p.m. and sunset are widely acknowledged to be the riskiest time to be on top of a high summit, vulnerable to monsoons and lightning.

"It takes people a while to wrap their heads around that idea — that to get to the peak by sunset, you have to climb during a storm."

And many times during their project, Tomer and Kedrowski encountered rain, hail and lightning — though Kedrowski's close call on Mount Harvard's summit was the worst.

By the 95th day, they (sleeping) bagged 58 peaks, counting the unofficial fourteeners that they marked with a nap instead of an overnight slumber. (Actually, Tomer's job duties meant he could climb only 18 of those peaks with Kedrowski, although he participated by phone and text for the rest.)

Their photographs and accounts of their feats are in "Sleeping On The Summits" (Westcliffe Publishing), a visually lush effort that manages to be both coffee table book and a climbing chronicle.

For their next collaboration, they hope to ascend Mount Everest. Until then, the two focus on staying in shape. Here's a sample of Kedrowski's weekday workout:

Monday: Run up and down Mount Bierstadt (14,060 feet).

Tuesday: Thirty-minute trail run on Table Mesa.

Wednesday: Two hour workout at Red Rocks, running the steps, jogging the neighboring peak and doing abdominal work and push-ups using the amphitheater benches.

Thursday: Short (less than two hours) hike near Golden.

Friday: Lead eight people on the Decalibron Loop — fourteeners Democrat, Lincoln, Bross and Cameron.

He also tries to include swimming, which Kedrowski says is excellent training for climbing the world's highest peaks.

"In the winter, I spend three days a week at the pool, because that kind of rhythm breathing is good for high altitudes," he said.

"That's what you do at 8,000 meters when you're trying to be efficient about your breathing."

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